Bees, Butterflies Both Battling Demise

Pesticide use may leave us a world without pollinators.

With good news comes bad. Preliminary reports from the winter of 2013-2014 gathered by the Department of Agriculture and the Bee Informed Partnership have found that loss of honey bee colonies from all causes was 23.2%, down from 30.5% the previous winter. For the full 12 months — April 2013 to April 2014 — the 7,183 beekeepers who responded to the survey reported losing 34.2% of their 670,568 colonies.

How is this good news? The 23.2% figure is well below the 8-year average total loss of 29.6% and much less than the 36% loss suffered in 2007-2008. But hopes that bee colony collapse numbers have turned a corner are premature.

Lisa Archer, director the food and technology program for the organization Friends of the Earth, told The New York Timesthat, “These dire honey bee numbers add to a consistent pattern of unsustainable bee losses in recent years.” (Friends of the Earth have been following the bee die-off crisis closely over the years. It’s worth following their website for the latest information.)

One neonicotinoids producer, Bayer, has mounted a campaign against the varroa mite in an effort to turn attention away from the pesticide and its relation to bee losses.

A recent Congressional hearing on bee losses was stacked in favor of pesticide representatives. Friends of the Earth reported that the Bayer Corporation testified but that the hearing included “no independent scientists on the leading edge of bee research and no large, commercial beekeepers who are experiencing firsthand the dire losses of bees which are responsible for pollinating many of our food crops.”

The technology-oriented magazine Wired has reported that levels of neonicotinoids and other pesticides harmful to bees (not to mention humans) are used in American backyards at levels dozens of times greater than allowed for agricultural uses. Neonicotinoids are also commonly used in nurseries. Unsuspecting gardeners may be importing the persistent pesticide to their yards when they buy bedding plants. (Friends of the Earth currently has a petition drive to encourage Lowe’s and Home Depot to stop carrying such plants with these pesticides.) You can find a list of home garden products that contain neonicotinoids and similar pesticides as well as other valuable information at the Xerces Society website here.

I’m having a hard -time imagining a world without bees and butterflies and an even harder time imagining one without flowers and pollinated food crops. Is it worth it protecting the profits of a few corporations that manufacture these pesticides for their own selfish interests? A bigger question: What kind of world will we leave to our children?